DAY 20 – FISH 5 – FISHERS

The team visit Hout Bay harbour to learn about fishing practices. Foreign commercial fishing ships take everything that lands in their nets, i.e. there are no legal restrictions on them. Local fishers on the other hand are not allowed to catch anything without a license for that specific species. These restrictions plus low quotas are strangling the local fishing industry. Local fishing boats are owned by foreigners, mainly Portugese, which restricts access to fishing as a livelihood for locals. Another problem is that quotas are awarded to people who do not fish themselves.

But fish stocks will be able to recover if the large-scale fishers, particularly the foreign trawlers, are prevented from fishing in these waters. This would enable the local fishers to fish on a much smaller scale so they will derive much more benefit from the industry than they do at present where they have to compete with large, technologically-advanced fishing ships.